The "settler violence" campaign is meant to offset real Arab violence
Israel’s public security minister gives us slogans, not facts as
part of a well-orchestrated campaign by anti-Zionist left-wing groups
to wage a moral counterassault to the explosion of Arab violence in the
last six months. Opinion.
Amnon Lord
It’s hard to envy Israeli Public Security Minister Omer Bar-Lev. On
one hand, he is one of the few qualified appointments of the
Bennett-Lapid government. On the other, what can be said about someone
who believes that all the recent terrorist attacks had “personal”
motives, even though they come on the heels of the ongoing Palestinian
Arab violence on both sides of the Green Line in the last six months?
It’s
hard to believe that Bar-Lev truly believes that one terrorist murders
because his wife left him and another terrorist was motivated by a
family squabble, and that a car-ramming happened because some teenager
argued with his dad. Maybe we should send in Education Minister Yifat
Shasha-Biton to handle Palestinian Arab family troubles.
Bar-Lev has to hang on to the supporters to his left. So, much like his legendary father,
he barricades himself in local battles: He fights Palestinian terrorism
as if there is no settler violence, and fights settler violence as if
there was no Palestinian terrorism. What he isn’t taking into account is
that the very phrase “settler violence” is a slogan. It’s a campaign
that left-wing groups have been working to promote for six months or
more, as a moral counterassault to the wave of terrorism and rioting that erupted during Operation Guardian of the Walls in May.
It
started at the end of July. Israel Defense Forces Maj. Gen. (res.) Yair
Golan dared to sign a letter condemning the Ben & Jerry’s boycott.
His fellow Meretz member, Mossi Raz, attacked him and informed him that
the "settlements" in Judea and Samaria weren’t part of Israel.
Golan
withdrew his signature. At the same time, we started to see billboards
that warned about the people in charge of the defense and
public-security portfolios, Benny Gantz and Bar-Lev. This was the work
of the Breaking the Silence NGO. “Settler violence—not on your watch,”
they said. The threat went along with quotes from the two ministers.
Bar-Lev’s recent meeting
with U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria
Nuland proves how deeply the radical anti-Zionist left has penetrated.
The left-wing groups have inserted this narrative into the core of the
discourse among American Democrats and media, including, of course,
left-wing “Jewish” organizations. J Street is passing it along on its
social media to people whom it sees as propaganda targets.
In one
case, images show clashes between a few masked settlers and a group of
left-wing activists and Arabs. It’s not clear when or where this
happened. In another, images show the demolition of a house in the
middle of nowhere, while a Palestinian Arab woman makes gestures of
despair. There are doubtless other scenes in this campaign that seeks to
instill hatred of Israel through isolation incidents of this kind.
A
minister in the Israeli government, even one who holds a Labor
Party-style view of how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be
solved, should be expected to present the truth to the American
diplomat. To put the systematic Palestinian attacks and a few isolated
cases of violence by Jews, which Israel is able to handle, in
proportion.
Amnon Lord is
an Israeli journalist with the daily newspaper “Makor Rishon.” His
articles and essays about media, film and politics have been published
in “The Jerusalem Post,” “Mida,” “Azure,” “Nativ” and “Achshav.”This
article first appeared in Israel Hayom
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